Benchmarking your performance

[TeeWee]

Assume a Noble - Standard speed game (my level )

I find it difficult to judge how well I'm doing in the game. Sometimes I seem to be doing well, but will fall behind suddenly without a good explanation. Sometimes I play the opening and end up far far behind in the middle ages.

What I want to know is how do you measure your ingame performance. What are your key performance indicators?

Off the top of my head, I can think of things like:

• Amount of cities owned
• Total number of population
• Amount of hammers in biggest production city
• Amount of beakers per turn
• Amount of commerce per turn
• Key techs discovered
• Power in the power graph

What other indicators do you look at and what are the levels you're looking for in a game at certain times (say, 3000BC, 2000BC, 1000BC, 375BC, 250AD, 800AD, e.g. every 25 turns)

I know that every game is different, but having benchmark levels makes measuring my game easier. It can also give me a clue which dial I should turn so to speak. So if I'm doing fine on e.g. beakers and tech, but lousy on amount of cities, I know that what a possible culprit in my game is and how to improve.

Any help for a poor little Noble player?

 

[shyuhe]

Don't look at absolute numbers - look at how you're doing compared to your competitors. That being said, try for 100-200 beakers by 1AD and liberalism by 1000 AD.

 

[DaveMcW]

Number of workers divided by number of cities.

If this number is close to 1.5 you are doing well.

 

[Proofeta]

Then you can have your capital only pumping workers and do a worker rush.

Even better using fast workers.

 

[azzaman333]

If I don't have a specific goal, I aimlessly tech my to death because I forget to build defenses.

 

[v8_mark]

Don't look at absolute numbers - look at how you're doing compared to your competitors. That being said, try for 100-200 beakers by 1AD and liberalism by 1000 AD.

100-200 beakers/turn by 1AD is waaaaay high for Noble. You'll be comfortably in the tech lead if you're at 50-70 breaking even; above 100 and you're usually blowing the AI away.

Usually I aim for 8 cities by 1AD, but as Dave says you absolutely must make sure you have upwards of 10 workers to accommodate the cities, especially if there's jungle.

The rest is all map-dependent and opponent-dependent I think.

 

[TeeWee]

Thanks for the first responses. I understand the "It's all situational" arguments, but I'm asking about averages and things that are your banks of green and red lights on your dashboard so to speak.

If it matters, assume reasonable landmasses (that is, not archipelago, nor pangaea). I understand that there can be some differences due to opponent placements on the map, but then you'd see e.g. large peak on the power-graph indicator but a red light in the beaker-indicator for the short term.

I'm trying to quantify the (partly) intuitive feel you have for progress in the game, if that makes any sense.

@DaveMcW, v8_mark: thanks, I'll see how that is in my next game. I think my initial expansion is way too conservative and only sometimes large enough due to "accidental" early wars.

 

[6K Man]

8-10 cities by 1 AD is one of my goals. This is usually attainable, although it forces me to expand faster than I would normally, or try to take someone out. I need that kind of pressure to step out of my routine.

200 beakers by 1 AD is another goal, although I seldom manage it (on Monarch).

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

What are your key performance indicators?

Land, Tech, Power.

First in land, First in Power, First in tech, by 1 AD.

In practice, it should probably be earlier than that, but 1AD is a reasonable target to start with.

If you can manage the triangle, you're probably in good shape to start working combinations that sacrifice a corner (Power + Tech - Land, Power + Land - Tech, Land + Tech - Power).

 

[Rooftrellen]

Number of workers divided by number of cities.

If this number is close to 1.5 you are doing well.

I had that exact number once that I know of, though it was a while ago.

Toku declared on me and I was down to 2 cities with 3 workers left (it is for that game I fear developing land near cultural boarders) before I lost.

I also find that I am normally doing much better when I have 0.8 workers per city, after I just took 8 cities to finish off the first real war.

I see the logic in the number, but its really silly to base your game around it. If this was a good way to determine how I was doing, I would always have 2 or 4 cities and 3 or 6 workers, never more.


I find it terribly hard to tell how I am doing, just because situations can be so different. Starting in isolation as Lincoln and ending up in a cultural victory is a very different game that having a single landmass and winning domination with Shaka.

I think there is only one red/green light for me that is reliable at all. How do I feel? Do I feel that there is danger in this game? How confident am I in the win? When the game is over, judging it as a whole, looking back, was there any point that I felt bad about the direction of the game?

The worse I feel about a game, the worse the game probably was. Sure, I sometimes may not know how close Boudica came to wiping me out, and the game felt easy when it could have easily been a loss, but if you feel like you are in a bad situation often, you are most likely in a bad situation, regardless of what other indicators you have that may point to how good you are doing.

 

[troytheface]

"If I don't have a specific goal, I aimlessly tech my to death because I forget to build defenses. "

lol- the ol "click til death" race.

 

[6K Man]

Number of workers divided by number of cities.

If this number is close to 1.5 you are doing well.

I see the 1.5 workers/city ratio a lot... is that for pangea maps? Seems a lot for water-heavy maps.

 

[Riffraffselbow]

It's kind of frustrating to me how people manage to misunderstand the 1.5 worker rule. It's not a "drop everything you're doing to maintain said ratio" type of thing, it's an oversimplification of a very complex question: "How many workers do I need?"

There are far too many variables to provide any kind of usable equation for that, 1.5 serves as a baseline from which to intuitively extrapolate from. It's a bit like "I before E except after C"; it works well, so long as you don't put blind faith in to it.

A "real" equation for how many workers you want per city would be something like this.

a=how aggressively you plan to expand, ranges from 1 to 3
g=how many of the 20 tiles in each city's BFC is land
f=how many of the 20 tiles are forested
j=how many of the 20 are jungle
h=how many are hills
d=average distance between cities
c=# of cities
p=your rank in military power
w=# of workers needed


w=c(g/20)+c(d/20)+c(f/40)+c(j/20)+c(h/80)+c(a-1)-c(p)

see, a much more useful equation, and even something of this complexity doesn't even approach such concerns as build order, whether the hammers could be put to better use, whether you need that many improvements, etc.

 

[Lafortezza]

Getting to Liberalism by 1000AD-1200AD is a reasonable guideline depending on your difficulty.
I'm at Monarch so those dates suit depending on map type and AI's involved.
If there's lots of wars and bad techers/traders like Tokugawa, then it'll be later.
If it's a Mansa/Gandhi/Darius buddhism love-fest then it will more likely be an earlier date.

 

[azzaman333]

I see the 1.5 workers/city ratio a lot... is that for pangea maps? Seems a lot for water-heavy maps.

For every map. Every turn you're working undeveloped land is a turn too many.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

For every map. Every turn you're working undeveloped land is a turn too many.

It's true that you can skimp below it somewhat and still only work improved tiles on some maps though. Crappy land with colossus or archipelago are good examples.

 

[azzaman333]

It's true that you can skimp below it somewhat and still only work improved tiles on some maps though. Crappy land with colossus or archipelago are good examples.

But, when in doubt, it's better to have too many workers than not enough.

 

[SouljahAtWar]

I usually look at progress vs. history. If you have Musketmen and reserching Liberalism by 1600 A.D., you are doing a great job.

 

[mc-red]

Then you can have your capital only pumping workers and do a worker rush.

Even better using fast workers.

your ratio will no longer be close to 1.5

 

[whats a navy]

wow. I've heard of the 1.5 workers per city but i just typically don't like that it isn't saying anything about where to but the workers. I typically have two workers per every city thats growing at a grows at least once every 5 turns. Then one worker per city if its growing anywhere from 6-10 turns. If the city hits the happy cap I don't have any workers but always leave an improvement open incase the cap increases. This of of course may break if there's some shop rush going on. Then I have one worker connecting routes for every 5 cities. seems to work for me in my games.